Refer: 14 Unfulfilled Promises
In the post “Comments on ‘The Problem with Network Folders'” I made a few arguments against the claim that Network Folders were no longer of any use.
Then I promised I would go into this further in a later post.
Verdict
Promise Fulfilled!
In the post “Using a network file share – a case study” I described where Network Folders are still useful.
In “AIIM’s CIP Certification – it’s a map.” I compared AIIM’s CIP certification to a land made up of different villages, and areas, each with their own skilled residents.
When I originally started writing that post, I had a vision of an island where each knowledge domain represented a part of the island, which further contained representations of the “sub-domains”.
And, that’s when I drew the “map” that can be seen in that post.
However, after I had written the post I realized that that map shouldn’t have actually been of an island.
An island, by definition, is not a continuous landmass and is surrounded by water.
The Certified Information Professional is not an island
With an island, there is no connection with other islands or, for that matter, with other countries (especially if you looked at the map I drew). It is separate from everything else.
This was very, very wrong.
The whole idea of an Information Professional, as defined by the CIP certification is, (and as Jesse Wilkins described it in his post “Are you T-shaped?“), someone who has a good, broad, knowledge of the different territories (knowledge domains), someone who has travelled the highways of the land, and knows enough to be able to get around each territory without the use of GPS, or SatNav.
The Certified Information Professional knows enough about the customs of each territory, city, or village that they can communicate and interact easily with the locals of each area. If they need more in-depth local knowledge, they can hire a guide, but they have enough knowledge that they can see how each city, town, or village, interacts with the others.
The Certified Information Professional can see the “big picture”.And this why the CIP map that I drew is not right. The land that I described is not isolated. It makes up part of a “global” environment and it interacts with other “lands”.
Think of it as a landlocked country in a continent made up of multiple countries (Europe for example). It takes advantages of its local talent, and specialized knowledge, but it interacts with the other countries. It requires them for services, and resources, that it doesn’t have. Just as the other countries, in turn, require the local skills and resources that it can provide.
So, from this, you can see that “CIP Land” is not an island. It’s a country. A country surrounded by other countries.
Information Management can’t exist without databases, without networks, without hard drives, or storage areas. Hell, if CIP Land was an island, my friend, the certified Information Professional wouldn’t exist for long.
Clearly my map of “CIP Island” needs to be redrawn…
Recommended Resources
What it is that I like about AIIM’s CIP certification, is that it helps you become part of a bigger world.
What do I mean by this?
Well – think of your “Information Professional” as someone living in a village.
A village called “Content Management”. They do their job and do it well. They’re not aware of the fact that beyond their own village lies a whole world. Then the person travels. Maybe they have to visit another area for their work, or they see people from other areas
Maybe they have to visit another area for their work, or they see people from other areas visiting and decide to go exploring. In any case, they get to see new sights or learn new things. The world, for them, however, is still uncharted.
I have lived in this land, and I also only knew of only a few areas. Gradually, however, I have travelled and seen new things.
At one point I started actively seeking out other residents. We all seemed to talk a common language, but each person had their own “regional” vernacular, or way of saying things. Each had their own experience and knowledge based on the areas where they were living. We learnt from each other.
The land we lived on was still uncharted. It had no boundary or borders. No-one knew where it started or stopped, or what places made up the land.
Looking at the map, I have come to realize that this collection of experiences and knowledge that I have from my many trips through different areas all fits into a big picture.
And that is what I like about the CIP. I now can look at it, and get an idea of the various places that make up this world.
I know which areas I need to revisit, or spend more time in, to give myself a more rounded set of knowledge and skills to be able to call myself an Information Professional.
Recommended Resources
This year’s EMC’s European Momentum is being was held in Berlin.
The Momentum conference is something I have always tried to attend. It is a great opportunity to:
Hopefully I will be adding to this page as I find more excellent ways to “be there” (virtually).
Also check out my Google+ stream. I’ll post regular updates there as well. (https://plus.google.com/u/0/110973870217970854594/posts)
Note – this post is in a draft format. It was written in June 2010 and was never published. The information in this post is not complete.
I have released it now as part of my AIIM CMIS Product Guide post.
CMIS 1.0 was ratified in the beginning of May 2010. This is the standard that will allow interoperability between the various content management systems that are currently on the market. For more information on CMIS, refer my Small Brain Notes on CMIS. Go and read it now, and when you are finished, click on the back button. I’ll be waiting…
Ok – now that you understand a bit of what CMIS will offer, let’s ask the question – when will it be available in these disparate content electronic content management systems?
Let’s look at the list of companies that were associated with the creation on CMIS 1.0
These three were there in the beginning, and developed the initial draft.
The following companies also played a part in the moulding and shaping of the CMIS standard:
Here is a list of the vendors with regards CMIS compliance.
| Vendor | Product | CMIS Support Timeline |
| Alfresco | Alfresco 3.2 | Available for testing |
| EMC | Documentum | First half of 2010 |
| IBM | Content Manager | Second First half of 2010 |
| IBM | FileNet P8 | Second First half of 2010 |
| KnowledgeTree | KnowledgeTree 3.7 | Available for testing |
| Microsoft | SharePoint Server 2010 | First half of 2010 |
| Nuxeo | Nuxeo DMS 5.3 | Available for testing |
| Open Text | Enterprise Library Services (ELS-Beta) | CMIS connector available now |
| Open Text | Open Text ECM 10 | Mid 2010 |
| Oracle | Oracle Universal Content Management | Not known |
| SAP | SAP DMS | Not known |
| Sense/Net | Sense/Net 6.0 | Available for testing |
This is just a short post. Just want to show an overview of how Wingspan components allow a user to access their Documentum documents from SharePoint.
Taken from Wingspan Documentation
Here you can see that there are two main components:
The DocWay UI is a collection of Web Parts installed on a SharePoint Server .
The DocWay Server comprises two components that are always installed together even though they function independently.
So, basically, what happens is:
Included Web Parts for End Users
Included Web Parts for Administrators
Included Web Parts for Developers
Wingspan produce several other products that allow integration between Documentum and SharePoint. One of these is eResults that I have posted several times about in this blog (see Tag Cloud).
Related Posts
I was invited out for dinner after the Welcome Reception by CSC.
CSC offer a product called FirstDoc that adds a compliance layer to Documentum. As well as that, they have products that allows documents in a Documentum repository to be exposed in SharePoint, while maintaining 96% of the functionality of FirstDoc.
It was a very pleasant evening, and the meal that was served was wonderful.
Thanks Nigel, Paul, Chris & Jim.
… continued from Part 7 — [Other Episodes]
Killa had told Trudy that he suspected a problem with memory on the web services server. It was way under the required amount, and Trudy had arranged to get more put in. In the meantime, Killa was going to show Trudy how to split up the crawl into smaller groups.
Trudy was sitting next to me. She had her notebook with her. This one had little flowers in the corner. She wrote down the date and looked at me expectantly.
“Ok Trudy, what we need to do here is split up the crawl. At the moment, all the documents are being crawled. As you mentioned, it takes about a week. If it fails, then you gotta start it again. And hope that it isn’t going to fail again.” Trudy nodded
Trudy’s head nodded as if her head was on a spring.
“We need to split up the documents so that we can crawl them in smaller groups. That way, if a crawl does fail. It means that you only have to crawl that small amount again.” Trudy scribbled furiously.
“So, let’s look at the docs. Normally, I find the best way to split them up is by size. Let’s have a look at the spread.” I fired up Documentum Administrator and typed in a DQL command to get the maximum size, the minimum size, and the average size, of the documents. The smallest was 0 bytes. The largest was just over a Gigabyte. The average size was just under 1 Megabyte.
I fired up Documentum Administrator and typed in a DQL command to get the maximum size, the minimum size, and the average size, of the documents. The smallest was 0 bytes. The largest was just over a Gigabyte. The average size was just under 1 Megabyte.
“Ok Trudy – it looks like you’ve got lots of small documents, and a bunch of large documents.” She looked at the results from the DQL query, and I heard her inhale quickly.
“Wow – we’ve got a document that’s over a Gigabyte – I didn’t know that.” she said. “Do you know what it is?”
I didn’t look at her, but just said “That’s up to you to find out. I just want to make sure everything can be crawled.” She wrote down the size of the largest file and put a big circle around it.
Carrying on, I said “we’ll make a new content source. But first – is there a Test system running here?” I didn’t want to do anything on their production system.
Quickly Trudy opened another browser session and opened the Administrator for the TEST environment. After a bit of clicking, I got to the screen displaying the content sources. “Trudy – I’m gonna make a new content source that only crawls documents under 250kb”.
Luckily Mike had given me a few tips, so I knew that the content source couldn’t be created through the normal SharePoint method. At the top of the screen was an extra tab titled “Wingspan Connectors”. (Wingspan was the company that sold eResults). I clicked on it and was presented with more tabs and a screen that displayed the current content source.
“Look here, Trudy, this is where the content source needs to be created.” At the top of the page was a drop-down with the words “Add New”. “What I recommend that you do is create a new content source using exactly the same details as the current one. Make sure that the name of the docbase it will be connecting to is the same, and also that you’ve selected the right Item Types – this is the tables in the docbase that defines which objects you want crawled, as well as the source for the crawled metadata. Give it a different name of course.
“Down here at the bottom:, I said, using the mouse pointer to make sure it was really clear, “this is where you need to specify the document sizes.” There was a section called “Custom Filter” “Because you have already defined the which tables that would be used, you only had to type in the criteria portion of the query. Like this:”
ANY r_version_label='CURRENT' AND r_content_size
Trudy scribbled furiously on her pad. The kid obviously wanted to make sure that she didn’t miss anything.
“Once that is done, click on the other subtabs and make sure that everything matches the existing content source. Once that’s done – click on Save.” Trudy stopped me. She wanted to grab a screen shot of what I had done. Smart idea – a picture is often worth a thousand words. I clicked on Save. The original Content Management screen appeared.
“Then,” I said as I reached for my coffee, “then, you need to make sure that the crawl properties are properly picked up. You’ll see here, next to the new content source, is a link titled “Metadata”. Click on this, and the metadata window opens up. By clicking on ‘Generate’ eResults will read the tables you’ve selected and will create a crawled property for each column heading.”
As Trudy wrote this all down I added, “Even though you can get eResults to create corresponding Managed Properties, in this case, you don’t have to.”
Trudy looked up “Umm – why’s that?” ”
“Well, eResults needs to know what column headings to use as crawled properties. However, the managed properties are the things that SharePoint looks after. When the original content source was created, the managed properties were generated. So these already exist.
Trudy wrote it all down. She was on her fifth page, and she wrote the date on the top of each page. along with a page number.
“Now – you want to make sure that this “connection” will work.” I clicked back to the Content management page. Next to the name of the listed content source was a link ‘Test’. “You click on this, and then on this Run button that is now enabled. This will cause eResults to make a connection based on the settings we have just put in.”
While I explained this to Trudy, I carried out the same actions. There was a small delay, and then the screen was filled with information. The time the crawl started was listed as well as an assortment of other data indicating that eResults was able to connect to the docbase. Under this, the crawled properties that were found for a the document were listed as well as the values of the crawled properties. “See,” I said, “it working.”
Trudy’s eyes lit up. “Cool!”
“Now, you need to create other content sources. Even though you can use whatever size limit you want, I recommend the following:
It looks like it’s the large documents that are causing the web service server to choke. Fortunately, there aren’t many of these.”
Trudy was busy taking screen shots, and making notes. “Thanks, Killa. I’ll get these created before the weekend. But do you think that it’s really necessary if we are putting in extra memory?”
I looked at Trudy. “Yes – the memory will help, but to be double sure, the separate content sources means that if there are any problems, you won’t have to waste another week.” She smiled stupidly “Oh yeah – you mentioned that.”
“One last thing – once you’ve set up the extra content sources, disable indexing on the original content source. This will clear the index for that content source without affecting the index from the SharePoint content sources. And it will also prevent having duplicate data in the index.”
I grabbed my hat and my jacket. That hot weather was now a thunderstorm.
“Once you’ve got the content sources, and the extra memory set up, kick off a crawl. Let me know how it goes.”
to be continued …
… Part 9
(Other episodes)
What is a social software system?.
In this post, I discuss this very question and look at a fictional company to determine whether their Content Management system is a social one,or not.
In a 2007 post, “Social Software Building Blocks“, Gene Smith defines seven social software elements.
These are:
Each social software system had three or more of these elements (but not necessarily all of the elements).
Using Gene’s list, I decided to do a case study where I analyse a fictional document management system and see how it measures up.
The Company: Wet Cleaver Drywear
Background: Wet Cleaver Dry Goods designs and manufactures ready-to-wear clothing for farmers. This includes rainwear, winter clothing, informal dress clothing, hats, gloves, etc.
It has factories in three different countries. It uses an Oracle-based Content Management system to store and manage, clothing designs, as well as operating procedures, sales information, customer feedback, and press releases, etc. Designs and patterns are sensitive and need to be tracked. Operating Procedures need to follow a Review process before being available for use. Press Releases need to be routed to the appropriate managers for sign-off before being released, and customer feedback has to be routed to the appropriate department heads. Security is applied to the documents ensuring that they can only be edited by members of each particular department. Each user has an Active Directory account, and a matching account in the CMS. Exchange is used for e-mails.
To provide users with a more “accessible” interface, SharePoint has been used to create a Portal. Each department has its own site which is populated with special web parts that provide access to the documents in the Oracle-based Content Management system, as well as its native functions.
Each web site has been designed by the IT department, based on discussion with the end-users to meet the “requirements” the department the site is intended for. SharePoint groups have been created for each department and populated with the users’ active directory accounts. Each site is secured so that only members of each department can access the related site, and, to ensure that a consistent look-and-feel is maintained, as well as to reduce support issues, the users do not have the right to create new sites themselves, or to customise the sites (“My Sites”). If users from different departments need to work on a document together, a SharePoint site is created along with a SharePoint document library. The required documents are placed in the document library by the CMS administrators, and specific users are granted access to the site. Further to this, a SharePoint Search Center has been created, and with the use of a special protocol handler, is able to index the contents of the oracle-based CMS. Users, however, are only able to find documents that they have rights to.
A separate SharePoint site has been set up to store FAQs, lists of who is in each department, etc.
Does this system have three, or more (or any) of the elements that Gene listed? Let’s have a look…
Something else that Gene had done in his post was to create a social software honeycomb.
Each element is represented by a hexagon. Each hexagon is shaded depending on whether the particular system supported the social element.
Looking at the Document Management system of Wet Cleaver Dry Goods, the honeycomb would look like this:
Click on the image to tweet it
Clearly this system does not contain three, or more, of Gene’s social elements.
* Identity – a way of uniquely identifying people in the system
* Presence – a way of knowing who is online, available or otherwise nearby
* Relationships – a way of describing how two users in the system are related (e.g. in Flickr, people can be contacts, friends of family)
* Conversations – a way of talking to other people through the system
* Groups – a way of forming communities of interest
* Reputation – a way of knowing the status of other people in the system (who’s a good citizen? who can be trusted?)
* Sharing – a way of sharing things that are meaningful to participants (like photos or videos)